Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible


Book Description

Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible is the fruit of Professor Loubser's confrontation with how Scripture is read, understood, and used in the Third World situation, which is closer than modern European societies to the social dynamics of the original milieu in which the texts were produced.




Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible


Book Description

Drawing on a wide range of scholarship dealing with the properties and function of the materialities of the oral and scribal arts, as well as oral-scribal interfaces, the author unfolds before our eyes and makes manifest to our ears a world of communications in which there are no original texts, let alone original speech, where manuscripts are written to be remembered and read out aloud, where scribal products exhibit both a metonymic and a polyvalent quality.




Oral-Scribal Dimensions of Scripture, Piety, and Practice


Book Description

In April 2008 a conference was convened at Rice University that brought together experts in the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The papers discussed at the conference are presented here, revised and updated. The thirteen contributions comprise the keynote address by John Miles Foley; three essays on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible; three on the New Testament; three on the Qur'an; and two summarizing pieces, by the Africanist Ruth Finnegan and the Islamicist William Graham respectively. The central thesis of the book states that sacred Scripture was experienced by the three faiths less as a text contained between two covers and a literary genre, and far more as an oral phenomenon. In developing the performative, recitative aspects of the three religions, the authors directly or by implication challenge their distinctly textual identities. Instead of viewing the three faiths as quintessential religions of the book, these writers argue that the religions have been and continue to be appropriated not only as written but also very much as oral authorities, with the two media interpenetrating and mutually influencing each other in myriad ways.




Jesus Before the Gospels


Book Description

The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today examines oral tradition and its role in shaping the stories about Jesus we encounter in the New Testament—and ultimately in our understanding of Christianity. Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally—including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament—how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus’ message but helped shape it. A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman draws on a range of disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, to examine the role of memory in the creation of the Gospels. Explaining how oral tradition evolves based on the latest scientific research, he demonstrates how the act of telling and retelling impacts the story, the storyteller, and the listener—crucial insights that challenge our typical historical understanding of the silent period between when Jesus lived and died and when his stories began to be written down. As he did in his previous books on religious scholarship, debates on New Testament authorship, and the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman combines his deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship in a compelling and eye-opening narrative that will change the way we read and think about these sacred texts.




Biblical Humor and Performance


Book Description

What’s so humorous about the Bible? Quite a bit, especially if experienced with others! Nine biblical scholars explore their experiences of reading and hearing passages from the Bible and discovering humor that becomes clearer in performance. Each writer found clues in their chosen biblical text that suggested biblical authors expected an audience to respond with laughter. Performers have a powerful role in either bringing out or tamping down humor in the Bible. One audience may be more disposed to respond to humor than another. And each contributor found that experiencing humor changed the interpretation of the biblical passage. From Genesis to Revelation, this study uncovers the Bible’s potential for humor.




Translating Scripture for Sound and Performance


Book Description

The various studies presented in this anthology underscore the foundational matter of translation in biblical studies as understood from the specific perspective of Biblical Performance Criticism. If the assumption for the biblical messages being received is not individual silent reading, then the question becomes, how does this public performative mode of communication affect the translation of this biblical material? Rather than respond to this in general theoretical terms, most in this collection of articles offer specific applications to particular Hebrew and Greek passages of Scripture. Almost all the authors have firsthand experience with the translation of biblical materials into non-European languages in communities who maintain a vibrant oral tradition. The premise is that the original Scriptures, which were composed in and for performance, are being prepared again for live audiences who will receive these sacred texts, not primarily in printed form, but first and foremost in community by means of oral and visual media. This volume is an invitation for others to join us in researching more intensely this intersection of sound, performance, and translation in a contemporary communication of the Word.




First-Century Gospel Storytellers and Audiences


Book Description

These essays explore the reconception of the Gospels as first-century compositions of sound performed for audiences by storytellers rather than the anachronistic picture of a series of texts read by individual readers. The new paradigm implicit in these initial experiments is based on the recent realization that the majority of persons—85 to 95 percent—were illiterate and experienced the Jesus stories as members of audiences. Either from memory or from memorized manuscripts, the evangelists performed the Gospels as an evening’s entertainment of two to four hours. The audiences were predominantly addressed as Hellenistic Judeans who lived in the aftermath of the Roman-Jewish war. When heard whole, the Gospels were vivid experiences of the central character of Jesus. These studies of audience address and the interactions between first-century storytellers and audiences reveal a dynamic performance literature that functioned as scripts for an ever-expanding network of storytelling proclamations whose envisioned horizon was the whole world. When the Gospels were told at one time from beginning to end, they invited the listeners to move from being peripherally interested or initially opposed to Jesus to identifying themselves as disciples of Jesus and believers in him as the Messiah.




Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament


Book Description

With the torrent of publications on the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, the time is ripe for a dictionary dedicated to this incredibly rich yet diverse field. This companion volume to the well-received Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (CNTUOT) brings together leading evangelical biblical scholars to explore and explain the many facets of how the New Testament writers appropriated the Old Testament. This definitive resource covers a range of interpretive topics and includes summary articles on each biblical book and numerous themes. It also unpacks concepts mentioned in the CNTUOT, demonstrates how the Old Testament uses the Old Testament, and addresses a wide range of biblical-theological, hermeneutical, and exegetical topics. This handy reference book is for all serious students of the Bible as they study how and why Old Testament texts reappear and are reappropriated throughout the Bible.




Sound Mapping the New Testament, Second Edition


Book Description

In the ancient world, writings were read aloud, heard, and remembered. But modern exegesis assumes a silent text. According to Margaret Lee & Brandon Scott, the disjuncture between ancient and modern approaches to literature obscures the beauty and meaning in writings such as the New Testament. Further, the structure of an ancient Greek composition derives first from its sounds and not from the meaning of its words. They argue that sound analysis, analysis of the signifier and its audible dimension, is crucial to interpretation. Sound Mapping the New Testament explores writing technology in the Greco-Roman world, then turns to ancient Greek literary criticism for descriptions of grammar as a science of sound and literary composition as a woven fabric of speech. Based on these perspectives and a close analysis of writings from the four gospels, Paul, and Q, Sound Mapping the New Testament advances a theory of sound analysis that will enable modern readers to hear the New Testament afresh. The second edition reprints the first edition with a new introduction that reviews a decade of sound mapping scholarship and argues for the continued necessity of sound mapping for New Testament interpretation.




The Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels


Book Description

"The field of Synoptic studies traditionally has had two basic foci. The question of how Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related to each other, what their sources are, and how the Gospels use their sources constitutes the first focus. Collectively, scholarship on the Synoptic Problem has tried to address these issues, and recent years have seen renewed interest and rigorous debate about some of the traditional approaches to the Synoptic Problem and how these approaches might inform the understanding of the origins of the early Jesus movement. The second focus involves thematic studies across the three Gospels. These are usually, but not exclusively, performed for theological purposes to tease out the early Jesus movement's thinking about the nature of Jesus, the motivations for his actions, the meaning of his death and resurrection, and his relationship to God. These studies pay less attention to the particular voices of the three individual Synoptic Gospels because they are trying to get to the overall theological character of Jesus"--